“If all this excitement isn’t enough—why not try a sport that was recently banned by the New Jersey Legislature! Yes, bungee jumping is available from a 70-foot tower at Action Park. (Bungee jumping from a crane was banned this month after a few serious accidents at the Shore.)”
The Courier-News (Central Jersey), August 17, 1992
In 1988, a year after Katrina came to live in the States, we were married. She had moved from quality control to real estate sales to owning her own mortgage business. Despite her run-in with the Aerodium—her neck pain would become chronic, throbbing for years afterward—she was in the process of getting her pilot’s license. In time, she would have a PhD in psychology. She would also become a marathoner, a mountain biker, a triathlete, a renowned choir singer, and thanks to the birth of our daughter, Alex, an amazing mother. The breadth and variety of her pursuits amaze me to this day. It is little wonder she had second thoughts about marrying a carnival worker.
My parents attended the ceremony in Austria, where we exchanged our vows in German. My mother presented her mother with homegrown tomatoes. My father created a minor international incident by overtipping at a restaurant, which is considered rude there. Afterward, we all traveled to Munich for the real Oktoberfest, where Mac Harris had too much to drink and head-butted someone. It was a beautiful time.
Back in New Jersey as newlyweds, we decided to brave a cold winter night to go out for dinner. Returning to our condo, we drove past the resort. Illuminating the night sky were flashing red lights.
“I’m going to pull in,” I said.
I stepped out of the car. Ambulances and police cruisers were parked near a maintenance shed at the foot of a ski trail known as the Bunny Buster. Though the resort was closed, the lights were on and the lifts were running, both indicative of the snowmakers working. It was close to the end of the ski season and the beginning of summer operations. Perhaps the Germans were having more fun with their wind suits, scaring the night workers.
That wasn’t the case. Walking closer, I saw people writhing on the ground near the shed. Paramedics were loading others into the ambulances. A toboggan was nearby, its front crumpled like a discarded aluminum can.
I climbed back into the car, my mouth slightly agape. The red lights flashed on our faces. I did not know it at the time, but I was looking at more than just the site of an accident. I was looking at the beginning of the end.
Heading into the 1990s, Action Park was increasingly in need of capital. Theme parks were massive endeavors that often relied on corporate backing with deep pockets and long-term financing. My father found it difficult to find lenders who would embrace his colorful history, the park’s perilous attractions, and his lack of long-term planning. A big park might have a forecast for the next five years. He worried only about the next five weeks.
Absent major funding, his solution was to keep the park growing and generating cash. He would use its profits to prop up his other businesses, or vice versa, redirecting money from venture to venture in a complex web of accounting. It was surprisingly volatile, which I didn’t realize until I began working in the office. Sometimes phones would stop working. The lights would go dark, the bulbs flickering out as though we were in the middle of a storm. My father would materialize. “All a mistake,” he’d say. “Just a misunderstanding.” And, soon, the bills would be paid, and things would begin running as usual.
Cash flow would sometimes come from unexpected places. In 1988, he purchased the nearby Playboy Club Hotel for what was considered a bargain: $11 million. The Club had struggled to maintain its flirtatious aesthetic in a rural ski area and passed through the hands of a revolving door of operators who tried to keep it afloat. My father resisted overtures to buy it until the price was right. Eventually, it came up in a foreclosure fire sale, and I was soon tasked with selling off the renovated hotel rooms that we converted into condo units.
To help fund the acquisition, my father persuaded representatives for Pamela Harriman, a socialite and the future United States Ambassador to France, to invest. He then sold the attached golf course, the only real item of value, to a Japanese billionaire named Eitaro Itoyama, conducting the transaction on his preferred business stationery of a cocktail napkin. After enlisting Bob Brennan to feign interest as a rival buyer, Gene persuaded Itoyama to purchase the course for a staggering $20 million. It was worth closer to $8 million. We later heard that when Itoyama’s lawyers saw he had committed to such a purchase on a handwritten contract, they tried everything they could to get him out of it. They were not successful. Gene’s verbiage, while possibly stained with salad dressing, was airtight.
My father used these proceeds to keep the park churning, leaving the comparatively worthless Playboy Club to stagnate, never quite realizing Harriman had sunk most of her children’s trusts into the flailing hotel. Her stepchildren wound up suing her for losing their inheritances. A Vanity Fair story framed it as a giant con and called the Club a “fetid sinkhole.”
“How was I supposed to know she spent all her money?” my father asked.
When he was flush, he would walk the amusement trade shows with vigor. One year, he jumped on a contraption on the show floor that spun the rider in what amounted to a human gyroscope. In the middle of twirling around, he let out a load groan and demanded to be extricated. When he disembarked, he began stumbling around, holding his stomach in agony.
“Arggh,” he moaned. “This ride’s defective!”
When the attendant asked him what was wrong, he unbuttoned his shirt, revealing a large and fleshy protrusion over his stomach.
“My belly button came out!” he cried.
The owner of the ride nearly collapsed in panic. Amos Phillips laughed so hard he nearly sucked the Band-Aid covering his eye into his head. The bump was a hiatal hernia, a small bulge of the intestine that resembled a golf ball near his belly button. He’d had it for years. It was painless, and he never wanted to put his various responsibilities on hold long enough to get it surgically corrected.
What my father found most interesting about those conventions was how serious people in the theme-park trade could be, bloviating about capacity and admission margins and construction costs. He made a beeline for the idea men and other entrepreneurs who were as caught up in the excitement of operating a park as he was. When he found them, they usually became fast friends.
One of these men was Stan Checketts, a Mormon from Utah who had a boundless imagination and a keen mind to bring his ideas to fruition. His booth had video of someone making a dramatic leap from a tower and dangling like a yo-yo from a heavy elastic cord. It was a bungee jump. In 1992, virtually no one in America had seen anything like it.
“This works?” my father said. “Can you really do this?”
Stan assured him it did, and he could.
“Okay,” Gene said. “I’ll take one.” He said this like he was ordering a chicken sandwich. Then he just kept moving through the convention, his eyes scanning the booths for something else he could impulsively pluck from the selection of attractions.
Stan would later say he crossed the aisle to ask someone if Gene was for real. “If Gene said he wants it,” the man said, “then it’s as good as done.”
The practice of tying oneself to a cord and plummeting off a high-rise platform had origins on Pentecost Island in the South Pacific, where young men undergoing a rite of passage would use tree vines to leap off cliffs without smashing into the ground. A few brave souls had plunged from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco in 1979, but the hobby had otherwise gone largely unnoticed. It was Checketts who designed the first dedicated, fixed bungee platform and took proper measures to make sure people were simulating their bridge suicides in a controlled setting. Gene immediately saw the ingenuity of Stan’s idea. It took virtually all of the risk out of jumping while maintaining its heart-thudding thrill. If the worst thing happened and the cord snapped, guests would simply fall on top of the air bag Stan positioned at the foot of the tower.
My father brought Stan out for a site inspection. Normally, we never had to build any kind of freestanding structure—our attractions all used the natural slope of the mountain—but the bungee required a strictly vertical freefall with a permanent and stable launch site. They settled on an area near the Alpine Center. Catching the two of them in passing, I noticed Stan found the phrase “Class Action Park” very funny and seemed to be in tune with the frenetic pace of the property, marveling at everything in sight. He had been waiting for a place like this his entire career.
My father’s idea of a business meeting with Stan was to indulge in his request for a pull-up contest. Despite pushing seventy years old, Stan was spry. He insisted he could beat Gene’s kid in head-to-head competition. They pulled me out of a meeting to participate. I was in good shape but bigger than Stan. He assumed moving my larger frame would tire my arms out more quickly.
“This is what we’ll do,” my father said, and whispered to me. I nodded in agreement. When it was time for the contest, Stan appeared, his narrow shoulders ready to pump out rep after rep. Faking a shoulder injury like a points-shaving athlete, I stepped back and watched as Pete, my wiry older brother, stepped in. Stan had only specified he could beat Gene’s son—he never called me out by name, and he had never met Pete. He stewed as Pete pumped out twenty-five pull-ups. Stan, motivated by the deception, managed twenty-six.
The agreement about the bungee tower took less than five minutes. The pull-up contest, betrayal, and resulting challenges for a rematch went on for over an hour.
“What kind of businessmen do this?” Pete said.
Stan and Gene were made for each other.
With waves of funding came decisions about what to do with the money. Sometimes, my father based decisions on what other parks were doing. While he would never emulate them directly, he wanted to be aware of trends in the industry. Recently, Great Adventure had introduced a stunt show based on the Batman film franchise. Costumed actors performed multiple shows daily, and since Warner Brothers owned both Six Flags and DC Comics, it was natural synergy.
My father had tried a live show with the Broadway Revue, but musical numbers were of little interest to our main demographic of wild-eyed teenagers. Whatever we did had to be participatory. If he were running Six Flags, people would get to jump on stage and punch Batman in the face.
One day, I came into his office to discuss an escrow issue with a condo and found him with his feet on his desk and his hands clasped behind his head. Normally, he’d be hovering over papers or barking into the phone. This was his relaxed posture, the one that said problem solved.
“You figure something out?” I said.
“Julie did,” he said. He took his feet off the desk and leaned forward. “Gladiators!”
“What?” I said.
“The Roman Colosseum,” he said. “Picture it: duels, jousts, and a champion among the people.”
I pictured it: People from the Bronx on chariots pulled by miniature horses, whipping the Brooklynites. Rubber spears jabbed into eyes. Winners getting the hand of Miss Action Park. Litigation.
I was right on most counts.
Julie explained what they wanted to do was a take-off on American Gladiators, a TV show that had become popular in syndication. It was part obstacle course and part game show, with amateur athletes trying to best the show’s resident heroes in physical contests such as scaling walls or dodging football-style tackles. The gladiators were a lineup of ’roided-out men and women in red-white-and-blue spandex and high-top sneakers who could swat mortals away like bugs.
Julie wanted to do the same show, only on park grounds. She had apparently gone to the Samuel Goldwyn Company, the show’s producer, for permission to use the American Gladiators name and trademarks so we would have a recognizable brand to build on. They said no. She did not realize her mistake had been in asking anyone for permission. This was not my father’s Ready-Fire-Aim mentality.
“We’re gonna do the show anyway,” he said. “We’ll just change the uniforms and name.”
He dubbed the Action Park version the New Gladiator Challenge Show. The heads of this flagrant trademark violation were Vinnie Mancuso, the former Wave Pool lifeguard and a longtime bodybuilder, and his brother, Mike. The two scouted local gyms for eight bodybuilders—seven men, one woman—who had “the look.” The look, Vinnie explained, was veiny, with tanned tissue-paper skin and enough mass to toss around adults like children. He wound up with a small army of genetic and pharmaceutical freaks. Vinnie gave them sensational comic book names like Titan, Flash, Star, and Warrior. The names of the televised gladiators also happened to be Titan, Flash, Star, and Warrior.
The snowmakers built a series of obstacles on the hill, including a sloped treadmill, a twenty-four-foot vertical hand ladder, and a cargo-net climb. After a zip-line run, contestants would climb a ten-foot-tall wall on a rope, navigate a rotating cylinder, then jump into a ball pit and crawl under a low net to the finish line. At the end were twin platforms where contestants would stand and face the gladiators in a climactic jousting battle. The weapons were similar to the ones used on the television show, sticks with padding on both ends. They looked like Q-tips, albeit ones that could deliver a concussion. Because we put no limits on who could enter, these behemoths were often throttling men who might have stood five foot eight and weighed one hundred and fifty pounds. On platforms seven feet tall, one solid swipe from a Gladiator could send a contestant flying backward and onto a mat like they had just made contact with a high-voltage power line.
To prevent our cast from caving someone’s face in, we fitted guests with lacrosse helmets. They were usually too big and often became dislodged, obscuring their vision and rendering them unable to see the trajectory of the giant staff smacking them in the face. Later, we gave them motorcycle helmets to wear. When the carnage grew too great, Vinnie would ask one of the gladiators to take a dive so the contestants could advance to another round and give the crowd something to cheer. When they were victorious, the civilians would raise their sticks and bask in the adulation.
While all of them were formidable, Titan was the most physically imposing. Vinnie enlisted a friend named Steve Liss for the role. Steve was two hundred and sixty pounds with 8 percent body fat. The ground trembled when he walked. He was an exceedingly nice guy, with a father who was a respected orthopedic surgeon in town, but he could transform into a convincing barbarian.
During one particularly violent encounter, Steve swung his jousting stick so hard it cracked. Rather than stand patiently waiting for a new stick, Steve theatrically broke it clean over his knee. The people erupted. Vinnie and Steve knew exactly what my father wanted out of this: a massive spectacle. For the big Fourth of July opening, Vinnie arranged for metal cannons with blank mortar shells to fire—thwom, thwom, thwom—to signal the start of combat. The pyrotechnics went off, sending hundreds of spectators into a frenzy. My father threw up his hands, embracing the energy of the crowd. He had finally found a live event that fit the park: A show where people beat the shit out of one another.
Within a few weeks, some of the gladiators reported that a man had approached them in the parking lot. He said he was recruiting gladiators for the television show and began to ask them about their training regimens, their real names, and who was responsible for the park attraction. Some answered dutifully, hoping to be picked for the syndicated series. Others, including Steve, told Vinnie that something was amiss. Within weeks, my father was served with a lawsuit from the Samuel Goldwyn Company alleging trademark infringement. The spy, a Goldwyn employee, had taken videotape of the show to play in court. On the video, contestants helpfully declared that the Action Park course was “very much like,” “exactly like,” and “identical” to the one they saw on the show.
There was really no defense to mount. Gene offered to put up a disclaimer saying there was no affiliation, but it was too late. The court granted the company’s request for a temporary restraining order to block us from hosting the competition. The following year, my father revamped it as a Tarzan-themed fantasy show, in which people would compete against bodybuilders who were now dressed in leopard-print costumes. It was like challenging an army of buff Fred Flintstones. One of them even had a female escort who carried a boa constrictor, a practice that proved unwise when the snake began molting and bit her near her kidney.
The show was a success even with the more generic theme, but my father’s insistence on hiring an emcee to incite the crowd like he had with the beauty pageants proved to be a fateful decision. The announcer was a sixteen-year-old kid named Danny. Dressed in African safari garb, with khaki shorts and a pith helmet, he fancied himself a little Don Rickles, heckling the audience and berating contestants. “Bet that hurt,” he’d say, watching a man get bludgeoned with a stick.
The breaking point came on dollar-beer day, a promotion so poorly thought out that no one ever took responsibility for coming up with it. (Ten-Cent Beer Night at a Cleveland Indians game in 1974, which ended in a riot, should have been a clue.) A very inebriated man was standing on the top of the hill overlooking the course and began to insult Danny, dressing him down about everything from his age to his lack of experience with women. Steve, who had taken a liking to Danny, tore the microphone from his hand and pointed at the heckler. His exact quote was not recorded for posterity, but it involved intimations that he, the onetime Titan, would soon arrive at the man’s home to pleasure the man’s wife.
Tossing aside his beer, the man and his comrades charged down the hill, screaming for the blood of the Tarzans. The heckler went straight for Danny, tackling him through a lattice fence. Steve came to his aid, and the Tarzans stood back-to-back, swinging at anyone who came within punching distance. Though they were mighty, they were outnumbered by drunken parkgoers, traditionally the winning team on park grounds. Vinnie waved them onto a golf cart, whisking them out of harm’s way. Police from five different precincts came to round up the instigators and summoned a bus to transport all the arrestees into town. It was the first paddy wagon I had ever seen.
The show lasted one more season, this time with a military basic-training theme. Danny disappeared. So did the snake. And so did dollar-beer day.
Live shows would clearly never be our strong suit. My father continued to search for some sort of secret sauce for the park—a way to contemporize and finance it beyond the installation of yet another water ride.
“C’mere,” he said to me one day in the office. “How are sales?”
“Sales are good,” I said. I eyed the office for signs of a paintball gun.
“Did you know,” he said, changing the subject, “that when Joe Louis retired, he went to work as a greeter for a casino?”
I didn’t, but I knew my father enjoyed boxing. It might have been hereditary. Dockie had been an amateur boxer who accumulated a credible record. He used to have his grandkids pummel each other while wearing football helmets.
“No,” I said. “Why?”
“Imagine,” he said. “The resort as a training base for a bunch of boxers that I manage. They’ll run around the place. Like an attraction.”
“But you don’t know anything about managing fighters,” I said, forgetting that the phrase “but you don’t know anything about” had no effect on him.
“I know real estate,” he said. “And this will bring attention to the development and Great American stock. Plus, look at Don King and all the money he makes.” At the time, Don King was the gold standard for making money in boxing without getting punched in the face. My father explained that Bob Brennan employed a guy named Jack Dell, who was losing his shirt on a stable of fighters. Dell wanted to sell part of his interest, but Bob wasn’t biting. He had no taste for the sport. Gene, inspired by his own father’s prowess, was intrigued by it. The fact that almost everyone not named Don King lost money in the ruthless world of boxing was not a consideration. Jack and Bob proposed a deal in which they would raise money for Gene and Great American Recreation if Gene agreed to handle the fighters. More money meant more capital, which meant a bigger park. My father agreed.
In short order, a number of fighters moved into the condo units and made the resort a training camp where they could disappear from the distractions of home and focus exclusively on their fitness. Gene set up a ring at the now completed Spa at Great Gorge so members could mill about and see the boxers spar. These weren’t second-rate amateurs. They were big names, or soon-to-be big names in the fight game, including “Merciless” Ray Mercer, who had won an Olympic gold medal in 1988 and would one day win numerous heavyweight championship titles; Charles Murray, a spitfire light welterweight champion; and Al Cole, a wiry cruiserweight title holder. Other boxers floated through camps, including Roy Jones Jr., Oliver McCall, and Gerry Cooney, the “Great White Hope,” who had accumulated an undefeated record before running into Larry Holmes.
Because Vernon was still as white as a bed sheet, the sudden materialization of a predominantly black squad of athletes—plus their sizable entourages—caused many double takes. Some people in Vernon had the temerity to make passing comments when they saw them around. Apparently, none of those people had seen these men beat their opponents unconscious on television. One local, a self-proclaimed Sussex County good old boy named Jack, seemed ornery around them until he got involved with the pick-up basketball games we played with the fighters and subsequently declared them “okay guys.” That was about as close as anyone in Vernon was going to get to racial harmony.
Because Jack Dell retained a percentage on the fighters, he was a frequent presence at the camp. It was difficult to tell whether the fighters respected Jack the way they would a playful old uncle or whether he annoyed them.
I once invited Jack for a tour of the mountaintop cabin development. Suddenly he jumped off the path and into the woods. It startled me.
“Got him!” he cried. Emerging from the thicket, his expensive business suit covered in dirt, he held up a black snake and announced that he was going to stuff it in Ray Mercer’s shorts. I questioned the wisdom of putting a snake in the pants of a man large enough to kill you with a backhanded slap, but Jack did exactly that, sneaking up on Ray and cramming the small snake in his trunks. Ray panicked, screaming at high volume and tearing his shorts off.
“Fucking Dell,” he said.
Whenever one of the boxers had a fight at Madison Square Garden in New York or in Atlantic City, my father was completely in his element, basking in the carnival environment that was big-time prizefighting. When I went with Jimmy to a fight in Atlantic City between Ray Mercer and Tommy Morrison, who had played Rocky Balboa’s protégé in Rocky V, a skirmish broke out between Jack Dell’s entourage and Morrison’s. Jimmy stood over our mother, shielding her from any wayward blows. When things settled down, we returned to our seats, where Katrina and a friend of hers named June were taking in the barbarism with a measure of disgust.
“I don’t really like fighting,” June said.
“It’s more cerebral than it looks,” I said as my father stood in the aisle wearing boxing trunks over his suit. “Give it a chance.” As I spoke, blood sprayed over our seats. It was like being at SeaWorld. Katrina and June left early.
Mercer won that night, but in boxing, fortunes could change on a dime. The men dropped some pivotal bouts that could have set them up for higher-profile and more-lucrative matches down the road. Over time, Gene’s boxing investment bled like Morrison’s cuts. The whole enterprise became a money drain.
My father, who often prioritized fun over profits, stuck it out for a while. He liked having the boxers around. None of the men lived up to the stereotype of fighters being stupid. They were all quick, funny, and polite. But Al Cole was ever so slightly gullible, which my father picked up on immediately. He managed to convince Al that Native Americans lived in the woods by getting one of the snowmakers to dress in crude cigar-store Indian garb and run through the trees, sending Al into a panic. Another time, Al was speeding in the town of East Orange. Red lights lit up his rearview mirror. He pulled over. The cop saw the car was registered to Great American, and radioed the stop in to Mike Palardy, Gene’s cousin and a cop himself. Mike called Gene. Cackling, Gene called the cell phone installed in the car. A very confused Al picked it up.
“Al,” Gene boomed. “What did you do now, Al?”
For weeks, Al would tell anyone who would listen never to cross Gene Mulvihill. “He’s got eyes in the sky, man,” he said. “I’m telling you, Gene is everywhere.”
As fearless as they may have been in the ring, none of the fighters would go within a mile of the bungee tower, which had taken on a sordid reputation in the summer of 1992. A number of towers had popped up across the state, but many of them were only semi-permanent installations. Instead of a tower, operators used a crane to hoist people in cages to nose-bleed heights of up to one hundred and fifty feet. While much cheaper to operate, this was not particularly safe, as the cranes were not built to suspend humans above the ground. The Department of Labor began shutting the jump sites down.
The state was on an apparent spree of stifling risk, as they also tried to introduce a bill to prohibit the sale of alcohol in parks. My father, fearing for his Brauhaus, argued that they’d also have to shut down any liquor store or bar within one hundred miles of the Jersey Shore and its many rides.
The prohibition died, but the bungee stigma remained. It hit Stan Checketts hardest. Stan had erected several bungee sites in Florida, but state officials there were petrified of the towers and insisted he put up a morbid caution sign that consisted of three illustrations: a cord breaking, a person falling, and a wheelchair logo. Stan argued that airplanes and cars should come with the same warnings.
Amid this controversy, my father looked around and noticed something remarkable. Thanks to Stan’s design and the precautionary air bag, Gene had one of the few bungee stations in New Jersey that was actually safe. His was the first to pass the state’s mandated inspection checklist. The media profiled him as one of the most responsible bungee operators in the area. Jumping on the positive press, he denounced the use of cranes as risky—New Jersey banned bungee jumping from cranes that August—and hailed Action Park as one of the only places people could experience a structurally sound jump. He insisted that Stan utilize all the most stringent safety measures available, from using a new rope at regular intervals, to weighing guests, to making sure to use the right equipment. For the first and only time in his life, my father was being cited as a safety expert.
Once some of the hysteria died down, the jump proved to be a hit. Patrons paid five dollars—one of the few ride surcharges apart from the Aerodium—to ascend the 122 steps to the top of the platform, second-guessing themselves the entire time, and get buckled into a harness. Julie persuaded Snapple, then an upstart beverage company, to sponsor it. In exchange for renaming it the Snapple Snap-Up Whipper Snapper, the company gave Gene a lump sum that he turned around and gave to Stan to cover the costs, making the tower essentially free to lease that year.
Julie then persuaded Ben Farnsworth, a New York City–based newscaster from NBC’s Live at Five, to perform a live jump on the news. Topher led him up to the seventy-foot platform and watched as the attendant fixed him into the harness. With a measure of disgust, Topher later described the scene to us.
“Farnsworth was a pussy,” he said. “He kept saying he wasn’t going to do it.”
Farnsworth had been in a protracted argument with his producer in the news van, insisting they were arranging his premature death. Getting on the platform just made his apprehension worse. Topher was my father’s son, reared on a diet of life-altering rides and calculated risk. This display of cowardice sickened him. Plus, a reporter chickening out would have made a lousy advertisement for the ride. As soon as the feed from the park went live, Topher pushed him off the platform. His entire broadcast amounted to, “I’m Ben Farnswoooooooooorth . . .” before he plummeted.
At the bottom of the descent, he dangled like a pendulum. “Let him hang,” Topher said, like a mob boss trying to intimidate an eyewitness. The newscasters in the studio began laughing uncontrollably on air, slapping the table at the sight of their colleague swinging listlessly from side to side. It drew big crowds to the Snapple Snap-Up Whipper Snapper, happy to be spectators even if they didn’t have it in them to try it themselves. If they did, we had complimentary “I Beat the Bungee” shirts waiting for them. A seventy-two-year-old man and former Army Ranger in World War II was challenged by his grandkids to do it. Compared to jumping out of airplanes, it was easy. He got the shirt.
Despite a septuagenarian setting a precedent, I had reservations about going up. The stairs felt like a slow walk to the gallows. At the top of the tower, the seventy feet felt like seven hundred. I put two clammy hands around the metal railing and looked down. Rather than cower, I suddenly realized the subject of all this controversy was not nearly as terrifying as the black maw of the Cannonball Loop. I stepped off, the whoosh of air screaming past my ears.
My father had only one complaint about the bungee. State restrictions prohibited anyone under the age of ten from jumping. He thought kids had every right to go on, assuming they had a parent or guardian’s permission. He began seeking out the necessary approvals, and soon newspapers were awash in comments from pediatricians who warned that a child’s fragile skeleton and developing cartilage should not experience the force of being jerked around on a bungee cord. Disappointed, he gave up on the idea of pushing children off the platform. I remained relieved that he never opened that nursery.
More than three hundred fifty thousand people would leap off the tower over the next five years. The worst injury sustained was a sprained ankle. Perceived as one of the most dangerous activities in the country, the bungee was actually the safest thing we had ever installed. Jim Bineau of the Brauhaus proved it. On a drunken dare, he jumped from the tower without a harness and landed safely on the air bag, laughing all the way down.
All of it—the bungee, the boxing, the gladiators—was an attempt to keep my father’s recreational business moving forward in the 1990s. Over time, the flickering lights and disconnected phones, which I had believed to be speed bumps, became endemic of larger issues. The boxing not only failed to bring in revenue but cost five million dollars, erasing much of the golf-course windfall. The mountaintop cabins developed in defiance of the land deal did not pay off, either. Since it was technically a camping site, we couldn’t install permanent plumbing, and no one wanted to go “glamping” and poop in the woods.
It is here and now in the mid-1990s that I began to hear more about the toboggan accident, the scene from years prior that had largely faded from my memory. The men and women I saw being carted off that night had been staying in a condo owned by their uncle. Inside was a toboggan. Nearby was the Bunny Buster, an intermediate slope lit up by lights. The six of them congregated and decided that if the lights were on, the trail must be safe to use, even though it was close to midnight. They had no clue the lights were for the snowmakers. They jumped on the toboggan and rode down the Bunny Buster without incident. They could have stopped then and been fine, but they went down a second time, and then a third. That’s when they lost control, flying into the air, through a fence, and over the edge of a twenty-foot embankment to the parking lot below. One had fallen off before the drop. The other five collided with the storage building and a utility pole, their bodies flung from the sled.
Though all of them survived, the injury list was agonizing: a broken leg, a broken back, collapsed lungs, a broken jaw. They sued, arguing the embankment was a man-made hazard that should have been removed or blocked off. My father and his lawyers believed the case was without merit. The lights had been on for the maintenance workers. The trail was closed. The tobogganists were technically trespassers. Above all else, there was the ski statute, the one that had kept Gene’s recreational businesses alive for decades. The one that said to act only at your own risk.
The jury, seeing the wreckage of humanity, saw it differently. They awarded the plaintiffs $1.9 million. The court decided Great American Recreation was exactly 54 percent negligent, with the plaintiffs being 22 percent at fault and the condo owner 24 percent responsible. That meant the resort was liable for roughly a million dollars.
Like a Ray Mercer left hook followed by an uppercut, that decision was accompanied by another. A woman had caught her elbow in a section of a water tunnel, whipping back her body, and herniating a disc. Her doctor told her that, during her recovery period, she could paralyze herself with a cough. A jury sided with her, too, for $675,000.
My father appealed the decisions, sending the toboggan case all the way to the state Supreme Court. The Court upheld the initial ruling. Gene offered the victims the deed to thirty-four acres of land in lieu of money. He didn’t have the cash, nor did he have a policy that would cover the amount.
Because, once again, he had no insurance.
Back in 1986, one of the biggest insurance companies for theme parks, Balboa Company, went out of business after their underwriter collapsed. It became harder for parks to get any kind of coverage at all. The famous Cyclone at Coney Island closed because New York demanded a five-million-dollar policy, which no company wanted to provide.
In response to this, New Jersey attorney general Michael Bokar approved a plan—with some lobbying from Gene—that allowed all operators to forgo the standard $100,000 in liability coverage per ride so they wouldn’t get drained by exorbitant premiums. The old requirement would have meant maintaining $4 million in insurance for Action Park. The new rule said an operator could get away with a policy or bond as small as $250,000. My father opted for only a notch above the bare minimum, posting a $300,000 bond for the entire park. There was no coverage for the ski slope at all. Though most ski resorts had policies, the state didn’t require it. To him, it seemed unimaginable that either Action Park or the resort would ever be liable for a massive sum. No judgment against either had ever exceeded the $100,000 paid to the Larsson family for their son’s Alpine Slide accident.
Perpetually undercapitalized, Gene couldn’t comfortably pay for those hefty policies, especially with our reputation. He still thought defending himself and paying settlements would ultimately be cheaper than premiums. Part of his reasoning was that the number of accidents had decreased overall in the late 1980s, dropping by a double-digit percentage across the state and plummeting at Action Park. It seemed like people were finally developing an understanding of the risks involved and adjusted their behavior accordingly. Also, we had gotten better at reducing the potential for problems, reinforcing safety instructions and tightening up rides by adding foam and hay in select areas. A steel divider had, at last, corralled the rogue drivers in Motor World, preventing them from taking free laps. We also brought in more capable engineers like Stan Checketts. The park’s overall risk was finally ebbing. It had taken a rogue trip down a ski trail in the middle of the night for things to come undone.
The toboggan accident was only part of my father’s troubles in those years. There was a crashing real estate market, which affected his investments. Attendance at the park was down by 22 percent; we lost over sixty-eight thousand visitors from 1994 to 1995. Bad weather. Stumbling boxers. It just kept piling up.
I watched as my father walked the tightrope, one that stretched back over two decades. I expected we would soon have word that an arrangement had been made, a deal brokered.
It never came.
In the spring of 1995, Action Park and Vernon Valley went into foreclosure due to $18 million in outstanding debt, owed to First Fidelity Bank, that had gone into default. In April 1996, Great American Recreation declared bankruptcy. More lawsuits were lost and judgments obtained. The total liability for personal injury claims climbed to $3.8 million, with forty-one cases pending. Not once but twice, federal marshals stormed the gates of the park, seizing admission revenue in order to pay someone who had won a lawsuit. If there is one certain sign of a business in distress, it is multiple police raids.
The bankruptcy case took up twenty horizontal feet of shelf space in the Newark bankruptcy court. Gene began searching for money to cover the park’s overhead. Bob Brennan, the closest thing to a human ATM he had ever encountered, was under more duress than ever by the Securities and Exchange Commission and had just filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. He couldn’t help. Bereft of emergency cash, my father tried liquidating businesses and looking for loans. He tried a transfer of assets from here to there, his trademark sleight of hand working overtime. He considered the bankruptcy another speed bump, a chance to reorganize and emerge from debt stronger than ever.
I had barely known a world in which the park did not exist. There was never any occasion to think it could ever be shut down. It had survived everything. So had he. Now the entire park had become a wound, and one he could not close.
Just before everything came crashing down, he had gone into business with Stan Checketts once more, opening a ride dubbed the Space Shot. The attraction used compressed air to shoot people two hundred feet in the air, making them weightless for two seconds before they descended in a controlled freefall in belted seats.
The Space Shot sat just near the Alpine, which was fitting symmetry. The Alpine was the first ride he had ever put in. The Space Shot would be the last.